Zoren: Ch. 29 anchor's tweet didn't break so bad

Abraham Lincoln was right when he said, “You can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

Particularly, in this era of social media, criticism, or just plain gripes and grouses, can come from any corner. All who tweet or post on Facebook subject themselves to scrutiny and interpretation. A reader’s merest twinge of resentment or decision to be snarky can turn a simple comment into controversy. As I say frequently, “for every molehill a mountain.”

Last week, Channel 29 weekend anchor Joyce Evans found herself in the middle of a firestorm because, on Twitter, she put a Southwest Philadelphia shooting in which one person was killed and five were injured in the context of the AMC series, “Breaking Bad.”

“My, my” some of the recipients of Evans’ message said, no doubt fanning themselves to fend off fainting, “how insensitive, how overstated. We have to expose this woman being lighthearted and promotional about someone’s death and make it sound like she’s ridiculing the mayhem and throwing it out of proportion.”

Such is our moralistic times when someone will find a way to “tsk tsk” any comment, no matter how harmless or mildly intended, and be joined by others who take the hissing and booing viral.

Joyce Evans did nothing wrong or egregious. She only left herself open to the onslaught of the allegedly offended during an age when people regard every offense as legitimate and in need of address. What did Evans really do? Come on, where is her transgression? I don’t see even a small lapse of taste in her message.

Obviously, Evans, like most of us, does not confine tweets to friends and family. She is on Twitter to commune with Channel 29 viewers and to attract them to her broadcast, which not only has competition from network prime-time and cable-news programs, but from a 6ABC newscast on Channel 17 and an “Eyewitness News” report on Channel 57.

Evans used Twitter to entice viewers to tune in and see the report of the Southwest Philly shooting on Channel 29. Promotions departments at hundreds of television stations across the country do the same thing every day. Networks, over the air or cable, do it, too. Radio stations and newspapers as well. The old “read all about it” or in TV terms, “see all about it” are time-honored traditions.

I can’t even see where Evans went too far in her call to viewer action.

“Breaking Bad” is not only popular, but one of the best produced, acted and written shows in television history. On most installments of “Breaking Bad,” there is a mass slaughter that makes Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre look like a tea party celebrating romance. (Oops! Did I just offend a tea party politician or an Earl Grey aficionado or the St. Valentine’s Day ball committee? If I did, too bad.)

A shooting in Southwest Philadelphia, though real and not fictional and including the actual death of a victim, can be compared to something that happens on “Breaking Bad.” The proportion and sadness may not be the same, but the incident, the wanton shooting of others, is similar to many a scene in “Breaking Bad.” Evans was not being humorous or dismissive of the person dead and the people wounded in Southwest Philadelphia. She was writing good ad copy.

It proved to be effective, too. People took notice. Even NBC’s “Today Show” and many national columns and magazines cited Evans’ tweet.

Anybody who knows marketing realizes that Twitter and Facebook are effective tools for reaching an audience. Every time I write a new review or article for my website, www.nzoren.wordpress.com, I send out a tweet and bruit the posting on Facebook. No one wants to write or broadcast in a vacuum, and no one smart ignores the resources Twitter and Facebook provide in generating audience or response. Evans was taking advantage of communications outlets at her disposal. Her message is glib and breezy, but it was meant to attract followers to her newscast, not as a personal statement about her feelings regarding the Southwest Philly shooting, which, as a journalist, she shouldn’t express anyhow, or as any kind of disparagement or diminishment of the lives of one dead and five wounded people. Evans was not being unfeeling or insensitive. She was merely shoring her viewer base and doing it skillfully.

The last time I saw Evans, she was receiving an award and helping to raise funds for REDI Inc., a charity headed by Delco’s Renee Amoore that helps send children to recreational camps and provides child guidance and help in education. This is the Joyce Evans who should be mentioned on “The Today Show” and in Entertainment Weekly, not someone who made a legitimate tweet and got pilloried by the oh-so-correct for it.

We all have to watch out for moralism and weigh criticism in a meticulous accurate balance. Umbrage is too easily taken these days. Virally spread umbrage threatens careers and humiliates people who didn’t mean what others interpret them as saying.

With Rob Jennings retired, Evans has the longest standing among weekend anchors. She has done an able and businesslike job since she came to Channel 29 from Channel 3. She is also a careful and reliable reporter. For Evans to be castigated so widely for something so minor as a tweet that isn’t even ill-advised, let alone incendiary, shows how much everyone has to be on the defensive from people who enjoy being holier than the rest of us.

Your 76ers are back

These days, it’s difficult to judge whether it’s good news when a Philadelphia professional sports team begins a new season.

The Phillies saw the end of an era with their first losing season in more than a decade and the early dismissal of manager Charlie Manuel. The Eagles are hit and miss as Chip Kelly works to institute his nonstop offense while letting opposing quarterbacks get first down after first down via defendable screen passes. The Flyers lost their first three games and sent their vaunted coach, Peter Laviolette, packing.

Now come the 76ers, perhaps the weakest of the bunch. Yay?

On television, the Sixers’ home is Comcast, which, between its two outlets, Comcast SportsNet and The Comcast Network, will air all 82 of the team’s games this season, which opens Wednesday, Oct. 30, vs. the Miami Heat.

Meanwhile, the Sixers have preseason games tonight against Brooklyn at home on CSN at 7, Thursday at Charlotte, Monday, Oct. 21, at Cleveland and home Wednesday, Oct. 23, against Minnesota.

Game or no game, Sixers activity is brisk at CSN. At 9:30 tonight, following the showdown with the Nets, the station presents “Meet the Sixers,” a half-hour special in which the announcing team of Marc Zumoff and Malik Rose talk to new G.M. Sam Hinkle, new coach Brett Brown, veteran players Evan Turner and Thaddeus Young, and rookies Michael Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel.

Sideline reporter Molly Sullivan once again joins Zumoff and Rose. Postgame analysts include former 76ers coach Jim Lynam and former Villanova and NBA guard John Celestand. Dei Lynam continues as the day-to-day Sixers reporter. She will be joined regularly by John Gonzalez and Marshall Harris, with Gonzalez also doing a regular show, “3 in the Key.” Sixers coverage will be an integral part of all CSN discussion shows. Pregame and postgame programs are part of the mix, too.

Comcast SportsNet invites fans to get into the act with twitter.com/CSNPhilly or facebook.com/csnphilly. Zumoff, Lynam and company are all ready to field and send tweets.

‘The Convert’ comes to Philly

Television audiences know Danai Gurira as the heroic, combative Michonne, who uses her katana, a samurai sword, on AMCs “The Walking Dead” to take on zombies and corrupt government officials alike.

Gurira is an actress of note, with key Broadway and regional credits. She is also a playwright who first received attention for “In the Continuum,” which personalized the AIDS epidemic in Africa, specifically in Zimbabwe, the homeland of Gurira’s parents.

This week, Gurira’s latest play, “The Convert” opens at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre. Jekesai, the lead character,” is a South African, circa 1895, who chooses to become a Christian to avoid a forced marriage then finds herself torn between her new faith and the burgeoning anti-colonial sentiment that grips her land.

Gurira has found a niche in writing about the women of Africa. Although her parents were born in Zimbabwe, Gurira was born and lived in Grinnell, Iowa, where her father was a professor of chemistry and her mother was a librarian

Acting is the more lucrative and attention-getting of Gurira’s careers. “The Walking Dead” grants her a large audience and, Michonne, already an important figure after last season, will have an even greater and more pivotal role in this year’s programs as she continues to fight the governor, mourn Tyreese, and move on to other soldierly and romantic adventures, katana firmly in her grip.